Talentdämmerung

Der Kampf um Talente, sometimes performed in Italian as La Lotta Per Attrarre Talenti (“The Struggle To Attract Talent”), is an unfinished operetta by winsome Austrian librettist and amateur composer Otto Büchstein. Never performed in his lifetime, nor for that matter since, a fully-formed script was recovered from his belongings in the opium den in Mandalay where he spent his last, fevered months.

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There is some controversy about its provenance: some point to the self-interested work of Büchstein’s life-long antagonist Sir Jerrold Baxter-Morley, K.C., anxious to boost his consultancy fees.

Synopsis

Act I

It is Venice in the 1890s. The mercantile markets are in disarray: there are brigands on the Silk Road, pirates around the Barbary Coast, and the arrival of venal bankers from the New World is threatening the profitability of the Venetian families.

Provocatoria, a minor Venetian noble and head of the Presuntuosa family, summons a council of her closest advisors to plan the firm’s survival.

“Our supply of gold ducats, once the envy of the world, is dwindling. I shall hand it over to those of you who can demonstrate their strategy for adapting to the new environment.”

The Queen’s inner circle comprises: Complicatio, who is responsible for workings of the firm; Ingraziatoro, who looks after the firm’s best clients, Regolamento, who is in charge of compliance, and the hapless Triago, who is general counsel. Also present is Nuncle, the Queen’s diminutive special advisor.

Provocatoria: Meantime we shall express our darker purpose. I am tired.
Nuncle, pass the deck. Know this my council:
My departing wish: this house must hold its nerve.
Wherefore I divide, in quarters, all of its reserves.
Conferring them upon some younger lance, while I
Unburden’d crawl toward my place in France.
I have made this hour a will to put the firm
In firmer hand and stouter head than mine.
Is there one among you who can forsooth attest
To an acumen so sharp to shave the chin
Or cut the lunch of those cur-struck brigands from the west?
Thou art my likeliest inheritors. Who shall make it right?
Is there one or two who, perchance between you
Has both the stomach and the wisdom for the fight?

Nuncle: Now steady, here, my lady liege: one hears it oftly said:
One head per pair of shoulders is enough
Less than one a lack, for sure
But no less a lack there is if there is more.

Provocatoria: What mean you, Fool? Your riddle stays unspun.

Nuncle: One head’s a head ahead: co-heads are none.

Provocatoria: Must co-operation e’er be seen a fudge?

Nuncle: So try it, ma’am: you be the fool, and I the judge.

Provocatoria: And here to be answer’d. Tell me, my lords:
Should I divest my mandate to a worthy heir
Which heir was you: what wouldst be your best idea?
How wouldst you drive our sweetened chariot to the sun?
What wouldst you scheme to make the rabbits run?
He, or she, or they, who enthrall mine eyes:
Shall with royal leave possess our frittered prize. Speak.

Ingraziatoro, who speaks in buzzwords, complains that with insufficient quality salespeople to build the franchise bands of roving mercenaries are picking off the firm’s most lucrative trade routes and diverting traditional riches to the Americans. There is but one thing for it: we must pay these roving mercenaries to bring the trade back to our firm!

Ingrazio: Whereupon, going for’ard, in deliv’rance of client excellence
Our solutions can and shall and must and will
Across the piece and on, or off, the piste be best in class

Nuncle: Ma’am I do believe he’s piste!

Triago: (Aside) At very least, an arse.

Ingrazio: Our multi-touchpoints deign a seamless urge
Relentlessly to drive high-class returns
Across our sacred franchise and, net net,
This th’ gulfing delta b’twixt ourselves
And those who would intrude upon our mark’t share.
That our qualities are deep, they do not care.
In pairing hot ambition and a lofty sweep
Across the product landscapes, lo! They creep!
For this, milady — ’tis the crunch:
Spare no investment, lest they eat our lunch.

Provocatoria: What doth he say? What is this talk?

Nuncle: He wants more money, Queenie, or he’ll walk.

Provocatoria: Your speech o’erflows with epigrams I scarce can fathom
These pearly slogans buzz and flap and whine with contrivèd learning.

Ingrazio: I am, my liege, obliged.

Provocatoria: Be assured: ’tis naught of praise.
Why do you babble so, Ingrazio? Your vocabulary was ne’er before
So thin of meat but yet so fat with dry bewilderment.

Nuncle: It’s a mode of discourse, as they say —
Amongst those who claim learning by M.B.A.

Provocatoria: Is that your counsel, Ingrazio?
Shrill baubles wrought from mast’ry of administration?
Thy mealy couplets betray just such a whimsy.
Didst thy stanzas come from foundries of McKinsey?

Ingrazio: I am undone, I must confess.
That very firm it was, My liege:
How did you guess?

Complicatio immediately announces a programme to relocate the firm’s operations to Bucharest, to outsource those than cannot be transplanted to Don Inago Montega, a local celery peddler who supplies cheap labour under water-tight service level agreements. This, he assures the Queen, will instantly save thousands of ducats.

Complicatio: My division’s damned, by unfunny fate
To live unloved upon the ledger. We are but cost.
’Tis the rust and stain and curse of clammy gears
That require a ruinous peopling.
We’ve cut our cloth as best can do
But these myriad needed grunts, though housed in meagre lairs
Kept safe and well away from clientry, are yet a weight.
Each speaks the fractious tones of jargoned tongue
Such patter steep’d, til cup is cold, in leaves of dismal science.
Each a different dismal one, his language apt to smother.

Nuncle: We understand them not. Nor do they one other.

Inclusivia: “His”?

Complicatio: Pray forgiveness, Lady Inclusivia. Hers as well.

Inclusivia: And theirs.

Complicatio: Aye, them too. Yea, this is our strife: this bewild’ring ’scape
Of contraptions yoked and tethered as a many gender’d beast —
Upon whose discombobulating backs our common fate depends.
And, O! Dilemma! The very men who work these chainèd cranks —

Inclusivia: Men? Just men?

Complicatio: Oh! and women — and those unsure, or curious, or as yet unaligned—

Queen: The heavens doth anoint!

Complicatio: Milady?

Nuncle: Pray, spare your testy conjugation:
Their majesty doth get the point.

Queen: It is a pretty speech so far. But has it any meat?

Inclusivia: Or leguminous alternatives.

Complicatio: I — we — they — am and are and are obliged.
They whose allied cadence powers our truck —

Queen: The dismal ones?

Complicatio: Aye them, with all their rancour —
By their inevitable heft, they play as weighty anchors.

Nuncle: “Weighty anchors”? None call the Reverend Spooner!

Queen: There are eighty of these dismal scientists?

Nuncle: More like eight hundred —

Complicatio: Eager but, yegads, inconstant. Oafish! Fickle! Slow!
I wouldst speed my rate of stroke, only worser comes with sooner.
And so, my liege, my battle plan: we set these Morlocks free.

Queen: To do what?

Inclusivia: To see out their best and carefree lives, unchained of drudgery.
Uninjured by liv’d experience: happy, unstress’d — full, fair and abundant.

Nuncle: In other words, less gently put, they’ll make the lot redundant.

Complicatio: Thus, unbound by work-to-rule, we’ll drive the train
Around the clock, without relent
Night; day; rain; hail or shine — e’en upon the Sabbath.

Queen: Our crankshafts pedal not themselves, Complicatio.
You’ve said you’d let your experts go, so
Who shall turn thy grimy wheels, without fault or favour, food or rest?

Complicatio: You can hire them by the score in Bucharest.
They are legion: all thifty, keen and swift.

Queen: But unpossessed of needed knowhow that, by rank and yank, you sent away?

Complicatio: There are certain merchants, Ma’am whose special skill
Lies in collating squads of fruity youths, fresh harvested from school
And putting them at our bespoke disposal.
They bone them up upon our musty almanacks —
Service catalogues, hymn-sheets, psalters, taxonomies and the like
And see them train’d, at pace, to keep to and stay upon our message.

Queen: What is this “special skill” whereof you speak?
To coach a bunch of wet-eared boys —

Inclusivia: — and girls, and grades between —

Queen: — to outperform our veterans? It sounds to us like sorcery.

Nuncle: “Outsourcery”, they call it. An amiable conjury,
Well-known to bewitch a gawping treasurer.

Complicatio: ’Tis more than cheeky sleight of hand, my liege.

Nuncle: ’Tis not. You’ll see. The logic’s flimsy.

Complicatio: ’Tis tried, tested and pronounced a win
By no lesser than McKinsey.

The Queen claps excitedly. Nuncle makes cynical asides throughout, but the Queen pays them no attention.

Regolamenti has acquired a “homunculus” machine to surveil and ensure compliance with rules and procedures at a fraction of the cost, and with far greater speed and accuracy than humans can do.

Act II

No sooner has Ingraziatore wasted all the firm’s resources on useless investment bankers, he returns to Template:Provo.

Ingraziatoro: Good Queen we are beset around by Difficulties of others’ making. our staff are furious. These new fancy-pants are lording their great riches over everyone, but they have not brought in any new business. In fact they are making it hard for us to keep the business we already have. and now our own loyal staff are leaving. We must therefore raise their salaries to match the new mercenaries!” “We must what?” Ingraziatoro: We must compete! This daily war for talent is intense! The necessary investment is immense. Nuncle: Cometh down the man, cometh down the hour? Cameth I down in the latest shower?

Highlights

Most famous rousing aria, accompanied by the string section playing “piccolini” — literally, “tiny violins”; shortened violin-type instruments specially-designed by Büchstein for this opera — comes when Prepostero, senior managing partner of Magic Circle firm Slaughter Cowards Later stands upon a white cliff overlooking jagged rocks of the tempestuous ocean between Albion and the New World, shaking his fists and wailing into the chasm:

It is more beautiful in the original Italian, so we set that out in full, with a translation below.

Oh, Fato, con le tue sfortunate oscillazioni ed errori di valuta scandalosa
Mi hai gettato nell’abisso della disperazione!
Non sono amato! Sono desolato!
Come posso cambiare le mie bollette senza valore
Per servizi giuridici di alto livello nel nuovo mondo?
Oh, fato, mi schiacci!
La guerra per il talento era già dura
Ma tu pesista nel renderlo più difficile!
Questo si aggiunge a quello che era già un ambiente difficile.
Dei, schioccati le guance!
Segna le mie parole! Ascolta quello che ho da dire!
Questo sarà un catalizzatore per più movimenti laterali

“O, Fate, with your unfortunate swings and errors of outrageous currency
You have cast me into the abyss of despair!
I am unloved! I am desolate!
How can I exchange my worthless bills
For top-tier juridical services in the new world?
O, Fate, you crush me!
The war for talent was already tough
But you must pesist in making it harder!
This adds to what was already a challenging environment.
Gods, crack your cheeks! Mark my words!
Heed what I have to say!
This will be a catalyst for more lateral moves”

The “More With Less” Aria

Another memorable moment is when Prepostero, having been told by his major client’s general counsel Triago that the firm’s reserves are depleted and he will have to economise on external legal spend. Prepostero peremptorily snuffs out the candles and exits his client’s chamber. “I shall be the judge of that,” he roars. “Whose hand controls the whip, dost though think? Surely you don’t think it is you?” He spits, before leaving poor Triago distraught on the floor, from where he embarks on the beautiful, lachrymal aria Dovremo Solo Fare Di Più Con Meno (“We shall just have to do more with less”) only to be interrupted by the court jester Triago, listening from a nearby window, who snipes sardonic rejoinders to each of Triago’s complaints.

Triago: When the master says, “Thou shalt do more”
I am thus obliged: I shall do more:
For legal art is the whole of the law.
And when he says “thou shalt take less”
It is the same: less shall I take.
With crumbs and crusts do shall I make.

Nuncle: Whose legal income’s stretched so thin
To play so small a violin?

Triago: Oh manifold skill! Flow like a stream
About the smooth stones of demand!
Collaboration? Oh, blast my eyes!
How we strive to operationalise
But how to vouchsafe service deliv’ry
With fewer dressed in legal livery?
What wouldst thou give for this old rope?
A measley mill or two?

Nuncle: You’ll cope.

Triago: Oursource! Rightshore! By this peroration
I endorse the yen for automation.
I’ll take the strain and with aught stress
But living breath, do more with less.

Nuncle: Oh, bless.
It’s easier than that:
You’ll just do less.